Moving out from this central galactic bulge, the panorama sweeps from the galaxy's central bulge across lanes of stars and dust to the sparser outer disk.
Most of the Milky Way's flattened spiral disk has been estimated to be around 70,000 to 100,000 light - years (ly) across, with a centralbulge of about 10,000 ly in diameter roughly around a supermassive dark hole.